What child doesn’t love the rhythm, vivid colors, and familiar animals the Brown Bear book offers? Brown Bear is a popular preschool theme that has been proven time and again to be effective in keeping children engaged. Personally, I have done the Brown Bear theme many times over the years. This time I wanted to try to find new ways to incorporate developmental skills while keeping true to all that the story has to offer.
We began with the book. I chose to use the slide and find version to add a bit more excitement in the animal reveal. Each child was given a Brown Bear story retell grid and printed pieces with an animal image on each. The children not only heard the story being read, they also used additional skills while using the pieces. Children would have to use visual discrimination skills to find the each animal as they came up in the book. They also would use one to one correspondence when placing one animal in each square.
The book can be found here (affiliate link):
The Brown Bear Story Retell activity can be purchased from the following link for a low fee:
Once we finished with the story, we moved on to our sorting bears. We used the Joyin Play-Act Counting Sorting Bears toy set. This set can be purchased at the following link (affiliate link):
This set kept the children engaged for some time! It is a great deal for how many uses it has. Shapes, colors, numbers, and fine motor are all developed while using this set.
We used the Brown Bear Math Mats next. These mats encourage children to use various math skills such as patterning, one to one correspondence, and noticing similarities/differences. The mats can be printed from the following link for FREE:
We used Teddy Grahams as the markers for each brown bear on the mat. The children enjoyed eating the bears once they finished the math mats.
We used brown finger paint on large white paper for a sensory experience.
Another way to retell the story is with printable stringing animals. The download can be found at the following link for a low fee:
This product can also be used to create a felt story!
We wrapped up our day with cutting colored spaghetti noodles. These noodles were vibrant, easy to cut, and edible! Direction on how to make these noodles will be posted soon! Check back to find out how to make a cheap, easy, and engaging sensory activity!
